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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: IPv6 news
On Tue, 18 Oct 2005, Andre Oppermann wrote: We don't want them involved in Internet routing, do we? Which, POTS telco's or ComReg? :) The latter does a good job afaict. I have had telco people vaguely explain some of the issues and abstracts of SS7 signalling involved in calls they were handling for "me" to me.Do you have any idea how this works internally? Apparently not. Phone numbers are an interesting species. On a global level they are used for call routing. Yep. On a local level however it's not more than a DNS name mapping to some real on-net identifier.Within a telco? There's a myriad of ways to do it afaict. The case I know best though involved calls inbound to an operator specific prefix (there are a set of 4 or so major telco peering exchanges in Ireland, where the domestic and transit telcos /must/ be avilable for peering). The operator used custom software to map specific numbers to X.25 "addresses" (I forget the exact X.25 jargon) on their own network to deliver the calls to various locations on our network. Unfortunatly anyone calling your ported mobile number from outside the mobile networks ends up with the number range holder (you former number range holder) The operator's prefix, yes. who in turn has to forward the call to your current mobile operator. Yep. Outgoing are not affected because the TDM network always sets up parallel in/out path's. The return channel for your outgoing call doesn't come back through your former mobile operator. I didn't know that, but sounds exactly what you want. Now compare this to the Internet and IP routing. See some little differences and diffculties here and there? Yea, I thought so.There are huge differences in the details, obviously. The basic concepts though are at least interesting to consider, if not directly applicable to IP (technically at least - operationally/politically is another question): 1. Providers servicing these prefixes must peer and exchange the prefix information 2. Providers must be prepared to carry other providers traffic into the area 2a. The providers within the area have to figure out how to bill for the difference of this traffic. Conclusion: Applying the phone number portability to the Internet is broken by design.Right, cause phone number portability is up and running for several sets of prefixes in various regions across the world[1], so there's definitely nothing we can learn from them. ;) 1. Does the US have number portability anywhere? If so, that would be a /huge/ region, and very interesting to examine to see how they manage it. regards, -- Paul Jakma [email protected] [email protected] Key ID: 64A2FF6A Fortune: "Plan to throw one away. You will anyway." - Fred Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month"
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